It’s is the first time in many years that I am back in the US during the 4th of July celebrations. While I enjoy a BBQ with friends and family today, I’ll also not forget the powerful words of Frederick Douglass back in 1852. In this video entry I read an except from that speech.
Tag Archives: history
Language and War in Georgia
Driving outside of Tbilisi on the way to the ancient city Mtskheta, my hosts and I talk about Georgian language and how it has been effected by decades of Soviet Occupation and migration patterns. We also delve into Russian-Georgian relations today and how war is still very much part of the language and memory of the nation.
You can follow one of the guests on this episode via his twitter account. The other guest will remain anonymous.
Fresh Wounds
“It is hard to speak without any emotion about a conflict when you live it,” a great new friend and journalist explains to me as we drive across busy Tbilisi on a Friday night. “I can talk about Kosovo, Iraq, without getting emotional, but this… its so complicated and has such an impact on my life,” he struggles to find the words to explain why the long standing conflict between Russia and Georgia, especially the 2008 war, is so hard to address and explain without getting angry or frustrated.
It is this complexity that I have brought up, or seems to come up, quite often in the comings and goings of a visiting foreign citizen journalist. I’ve gotten to hear about the experiences of people here, what they were doing to keep safe and protect their loved ones while their home city was being bombed from above. I listen to the stories and then I walk down to a local café with fancy named drinks and free wifi, I struggle to imagine bombs raining down anywhere near this place. Why would anyone agree to do that? Who pushes that button, and goes on with life?
2008. Not 1998. Not 1948. In 2008 the Russian army moved using their justification and the Georgian army responded using their justification. Even if I’ve got the sequence of events wrong, at the most basic level, two armies which are made of human beings, took aim at each other in an effort to damage or destroy the other.
I’m simplifying war, which my wise friend reminds me in words, is more possible when you haven’t lived that war. But I do it because I have studied and I continue to study the world. In my observations and studying I have witnessed that most irreconcilable differences are reconcilable. Most conflicts are created, orchestrated, and inflated by political and military leaders. And beyond who creates the conflict, it is we the citizens of the world who carry out the gruesome inhumane task of trying to destroy one another. Without our cooperation, our hands at the controls, our fingers on the triggers, most wars could not be fought. Even a drone has a pilot somewhere, who is consciously carrying out a task relating to war.
So now for the impossible. Where I lose you because what I invision is considered impossible… even though in terms of our abilities as humans and our collective power… it is physically and mentally possible to do. That is to refuse. Refuse to line up for war. Refuse to pull the trigger. And perhaps most importantly, refuse to believe what you’re told about the mission; that those people over that line deserve to die and that you’re right for carrying out orders to harm them. -OF course- this means both sides. This only works with a cross border, cross cultural, out pouring of some of the greatest bravery the world has ever seen. That two militaries would refuse to take aim at each other. What a beautifully boring war it would be.
Guardian Piece on Sousa Mendes
Today my piece on visiting the Casa do Passal and the Legacy of Sousa Aristides de Sousa Mendes was published on the Guardian CiF. It looks at the failure to truly honor his memory as well as how even today there are those with the power to decide to break a rule or a law to save lives. Here’s an excerpt, please click the link to read the whole thing:
“So you’ve seen our shame, our disgrace?” Those were the first words from an older gentleman wearing a sash along the parade route. It is carnival in Cabanas de Viriato, the ancestral home of Portuguese second world war hero Aristides de Sousa Mendes, and I’m walking alongside Francisco Antonio Campos, director of the local philharmonic.
He sounds frustrated as he stares in any direction to avoid looking at theghastly abandoned mansion looming over us in the town square. More than 70 years since Sousa Mendes, a diplomat assigned to the consulate in Bordeaux, saved over 30,000 people from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, his story remains largely unknown and his majestic home, Casa do Passal, is falling to pieces.
Note: For those in the NYC/Long Island area, there is a special event being put on by the Sousa Mendes Foundation on Saturday in Mineola. Full details here.
Natasha Ezrow: Dissecting Dictators
2011 is the year where many observers and so called experts around the world scramble to understand how it is that so many dictatorships suddenly arrived at a crisis. As people take to the streets and battles take place in city squares throughout the middle east, we discover that in fact many of the dictators of these regions have not been well studied or understood.
Natasha Ezrow, Director of the International Development Studies Program at the University of Essex and author of Dictators & Dictatorships: Understanding Authoritarian Regimes and Their Leaders, has written about the important differences between dictators which we now see being played out by how they handle calls for reform. She also lays out criteria for why types of leaders might flee a country before anyone is harmed, while others would stay til their last breath.
Casa do Passal 2011
Artistides de Sousa Mendes saved the lives of over 30,000 people in Southern France in 1940. He did so in defiance of orders from the Portuguese Dictator who in turn disgraced him and blacklisted him, eventually leaving him in poverty. This included the loss of Casa do Passal his iconic family home in Cabanas de Viriato.
Only decades later was his name restored and the story of his heroic deed recognized throughout the world. However at this very moment his magnificent home continues to be neglected and teeters on the brink of collapse, waiting for a plan to be approved and carried out, to restore it as a symbol and tribute to those in this world who don’t just follow orders and who take action to help others regardless of the risk to themselves.
I had a chance to visit Casa do Passal during Carnaval in Cabanas over the past few days. The following video contains moments from that visit.